Yesterday was M.’s 9th birthday, her first since her father died. I tried my best to make it a good day for her, and I think it was. We got through the whole day without her being sad at all, which is good. I, of course, kept thinking about what he was missing, and how […]

Life changes fast. Life changes in an instant. You sit down to dinner and life as you know it ends. The Year of Magical Thinking has been on my reading list since it first came out at the end of 2005, and I just hadn’t gotten around to reading it. In looking for books […]

As with most of us, I love the idea of reusing and recycling things that could otherwise just be useless. Pallets have been hugely popular over the years for the sheer variety of things you can do with them, either as a whole or by taking them apart. Reclaimed wood, especially barn wood, is just […]

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Book Review: Alive by Scott Sigler

Note: I received a free advance readers copy of this book from Goodreads “First Reads” program.

I found out about two weeks ago from Goodreads that I was the winner of a copy of Scott Sigler’s upcoming book, Alive. I’ve been a fan of Sigler’s writing for a long time, so I’ve been looking forward to getting the book in the mail.

Friday when I got home from work I found the book waiting for me. I started reading it Friday evening, and finished it Sunday evening. I had an extremely busy weekend with M.’s birthday party on Saturday and a full day of chores and errands on Sunday, but the book sucked me in completely so I spent every free minute I had reading it.

This sci-fi adventure is in the same vein as many other books out in recent years that are “Teen” books, but are so good that adults want to read them too. While the characters are young, the story and the writing is not. What separates this book from so many others is the author. Only Scott Sigler could come up with the twists and turns in this book. Every time I thought I knew what was going on, I didn’t. Or I did, but there was more to it than I thought.

I’m the first to admit that some of Sigler’s horror books, while I still read them, are gory enough to make me cringe. His graphic descriptions of injuries and attacks, so detailed that you can hear ever bloody squish in your head while you read them, could make even the most un-squeamish person shudder. I was pleased there was less of that in Alive. While that’s to be expected since it’s not a horror book, I did go into it wondering what I was in for. The horrors in this book, and there still are some, are more psychological than physical. Although there was some of that too. It is a Sigler book, after all.

Without giving away too much (no spoilers), it starts out with a girl who can’t remember her name waking up on her birthday in a coffin. And it only gets weirder. The oddity of the setting, the great interactions between characters, and the main character’s own confusion about who she is and why she reacts to events in certain ways add to the mystery. The characters don’t know who they are, where they are or why they are there, and neither does the reader. We find out as they do.

I loved this book. It’s the first in a planned series, and I already can’t wait to read the next book. It is available this July, so go pre-order it on Amazon, or wherever you can, now. Seriously. Do it. Here.